I've always felt that my father made me the sports fan that I am today. As a young child I have great memories of sitting and watching big football games or the World Series with him. Generally the teams that I follow today are ones that I inherited from him. The one sport that doesn't hold true to is hockey.

I grew up in New York City in Queens. During football season we went to New York Giant games, during baseball season we went to Mets game and during the winter we went to Madison Square Garden to see the Knicks play basketball or the Rangers play hockey. I still love all of those teams, except the Rangers. My Dad has not really forgiven me because I have abandoned the New York Rangers and now root for their rival New York Islanders.

He calls me a front runner even now all these years later but how could a kid growing up in the area not love the Islanders teams that were winning four straight Stanley Cups between 1980 and 1984? They had amazing players too; Denis Potvin, Mike Bossy, Clark Gillies, Bryan Trottier who have all made the Hall of Fame. My favorite player was Bobby Nystrom who scored in overtime when the Islanders won the first of the four Cups. Now we both live out of the New York area but we both watch the games on our satellite TV services from Direc4U.com and call each other to fight during Rangers-Islanders games.